ORIENT: Cambodia Revisited

Cambodia Revisited
by Marc Phillip Yablonka

Incredible as it may seem, tourism in the land of the infamous atrocities of the killing fields, during which an estimated one to three million Cambodians perished, is up 28.6% in 1996.
And the same warm, innocent, unknowing smiles that greeted the Khmer Rouge as they entered Phnom Penh in April 1975, making it a ghost town by 1979, are now welcoming quite a different army: tourists, roughly 123,000 in 1996 according to Rous Sam Ear, deputy director of the Planning Department of the Ministry of Tourism.
None of this would be possible, of course, without the 1991 United Nations-brokered peace accords, fragile as they are still, and the 1993 elections, which designated a joint leadership between King Norodom Sihanouk and the (then) Vietnamese-backed Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Fragile peace notwithstanding, the tourists are flying into Pochentong International Airport on Cambodia's newly revamped French-piloted Royal Air Cambodge, Thai Air, Vietnam Airlines, Lao Aviation, Malaysia Air Systems as well as Hong Kong's Dragon and Singapore's Silk Air.
"Most are either Chinese or Taiwanese who come for commerce, handicrafts, or to invest in some of the (post-Vietnam War renovating in the) provinces. The Japanese and French come because they visit cultural sites," according to Mr. Ear.
"Since Cambodia opened up across the board two years ago, there have also been business and leisure people here," says Helen Lim, director of Sales and Marketing for Phnom Penh's Hotel Sofitel Cambodiana, to date the most comfortable hotel in the nation's capitol.
Japan, perhaps finally reckoning with responsibilities dating back to its World War II occupation of Indochina, has lent a helping hand Cambodia's way.
The Japanese are helping the government and NGOs like the Red Cross. They are helping to rebuild Angkor Wat. They constructed the Japan-Cambodia Bridge over the Ton Le Sap River.
"They have a special place in their hearts for Cambodia," according to Ms. Lim.
As the city's most secure hotel, a haven away from the previous Khmer Rouge threat and the current wave of young thug-induced thievery that still plagues Phnom Penh's tourists late at night, the Cambodiana's 267 rooms, from executive suites to long-term studios, was "the only" place to stay throughout the tenuous period of the redeveloping Cambodia from 1991 to 1993. Hence, it housed members of the press, NGO's and UNTAC personnel through the period.
"During the political upheavals in the days of Kampuchea, it was boom-town Charlie for us," Lim stressed.
But the hotel's dominance in the market may be short-lived with the increase in overseas investment, impending improvement of the country's infrastructure, coupled with the steadily-growing positive numbers in tourism since 1993, when the country officially declared itself open for tourism.
"There are many foreign and local investors who are putting money into building new hotels in the priority areas of Phnom Penh, Siem Reap (home to the Hindu/Buddhist wonders of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Le Bayon, built between the 7th and 13th centuries and only rediscovered in the mid-1800's) and the beach-side resort town of Sihanoukville (formerly Kampong Sam)," stated Ear, adding that nearby investment is coming from corporations such as Thai Nakorn and YLT Malaysia.
In fact, Hotel Le Royale, immortalized in the film The Killing Fields as the hotel which housed the journalists who covered Cambodia's sad connection to the Vietnam War, is currently being renovated by the builders of Singapore's famed Raffles Hotel, largely up-scaling the few dollars paid by the correspondents in the 60's and early 70's for a night's stay to several hundred dollars per night. They are doing the same with Le Grand Hotel d'Angkor in Siem Reap.
Though the bulk of Cambodia's hotels are best classified as "back-packer-friendly," Phnom Penh's already existing hostelry will increase by 1,500 rooms by the year 2000; that same number of rooms will be added at Sihanoukville. And tiny Siem Reap, which currently has but a few pension-type hotels, will add another 2,000 rooms.
All of which frankly worries Helen Lim, who feels that there could be an oversupply of hotels in cities reached by, in her opinion, an inadequate fleet of Royal Air Cambodge Boeing 737s and ATR-72s.

A young Cambodian enterprisingly sells baskets at Angkor Thom.

"I wouldn't eat 100% of the plate," she says. "Take a little off the top. Don't believe everything you are told about tourism in Cambodia."
She cautions that those visiting Cambodia should not expect too much.
"Cambodia does not compare with any other country--ăthe way it presents itself. This is not Bangkok. If you come here with little or no expectations, take it as it is, don't get upset if you get a dirty napkin in a restaurant, you will have a good time."
She is less enthusiastic about the media which, she feels, have invaded the country of late.
"Cambodia always receives such negative press. I hope you guys go back and write positive stories for a change. You journalists always go to places you're told not to go. You insist on going and God bless you if you do," she emphasized.
Still Ear is excited about the projected figures for tourism in his country, press visitors inclusive.
"The peace treaty will increase tourism 40% by 2000," he says. "By 1998, the royal government will have finished all the infrastructure, like our airports. Tourist services are training guides to speak English, French, Japanese and German."
"Tourism is important. Tourist dollars go towards restaurants, drivers (Cambodia has no taxis), tickets for Angkor Wat, handicrafts," he adds.
With all the talk of the new Cambodia, however, one cannot escape its recent history.
"It's very sad. People appreciate being here because it brings them back to reality," Lim feels." The people are poor, but they are happy in their own way. Yet, it hurts knowing what's out there and the way they are really living."
Sad may be an understatement when one studies the murderous Khmer Rouge, third in brutality only to that of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Practically everyone in Cambodia had relatives who perished in the notorious killing fields. After all, its leader, Mao-inspired Pol Pot, is still very much alive, holed up on the Thai/Cambodia border in the jungles of Pailin, taking large kickbacks from the ruby trade that passes from his country into Thailand---contrary to recent news reports that had him either dead or suffering from extreme malaria.
Miss Pen Phalla is no exception. She lost 25 relatives: her father, husband, daughter, son, two brothers, two brothers-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and 15 nieces and nephews. She is today a tour guide at Toul Sleng, the former school which served as a Khmer Rouge "clearing house."
There, thousands of Phnom Penh's citizenry were documented then tortured by methods tantamount to those employed by the Nazis at Auschwitz and Dachau; after which they were shipped to killing fields like Cheung Ek, 15 kilometers outside Phnom Penh, today marked by a tall multi-leveled stupa laden with the skulls of hundreds.

The author with a new friend.

"I'm very nervous now because of all those nights I heard footsteps. I saw the Khmer Rouge coming to take me away to be killed. I felt they wanted to kill me," Miss Phalla confessed, chiding this reporter for not having a cassette recorder in tow to tape her emotional story.
Recently, high-ranking officials of Pol Pot's regime have begun to come out of the jungles and seek "asylum" in their own country as well as forgiveness for their deeds. Some, like Ieng Sary, the KR's former Minister of Foreign Affairs, plead total ignorance to the starvation, maiming and ruthless killings. In Sary's case, his insistence that he knew nothing has worked, for King Sihanouk, often quartered in China where he seeks treatment reportedly for arteriosclerosis, and Hun Sen have agreed to pardon him.
"When Ieng Sary was on television, in front of journalists, he was smiling," Phalla said. "They should have killed him. Because of TV, they couldn't.
"He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. How could he not know that three million people had been killed?" she asked.
Soch, Soselsun, a Siem Reap tour guide, takes a more middle ground, though he, like Phalla, allows his heart to speak in the end.
"Some Cambodian people feel we should not punish the Khmer Rouge because, if we do, there will be no peace. But if we don't, people will feel guilty. What should we do? If we have problems, the Khmer Rouge will come again. I think they should be sentenced," he said.
And what of the Khmer Rouge's future? Nearly 2,000 KR guerrillas have followed their former leaders in laying down their AK-47s, according to recent reports from Reuters.
"There are still KRs even here in Phnom Penh," insists a US Embassy official over locally-brewed Angkor Beer at the Foreign Correspondents Club. "But they've realized that it is better to make money than go around killing people."
Cambodia will soon undoubtedly change, with its desire to follow in neighboring Vietnam's footsteps, capitalizing on those who want to visit it, bringing needed US $, French Francs, Japanese Yen and the like.
Meanwhile, at Wat Tmeay, close by Angkor Wat, Sisters Teis, Soy and eight other Buddhist nuns who have chosen a vow of poverty devoted to Buddha, live in thatched elevated hootches to be close to the souls of the husbands and children they lost to Pol Pot.
Teis and Soy don't often welcome many fair-skinned American correspondents into their little village, which houses its own stupa containing the skulls, bones, even the clothes their loved ones wore to their deaths.
Living on what they can, they still laugh through broad smiles. Teis strokes the arm of a female reporter on assignment for the Denver Post. "Now I have a daughter in America," she says in heartfelt Khmer.
When one journalist gives them US$10, enough to provide them rice for a month he later learns, all of the nuns raise their hands to their foreheads in the Buddhist "Wai," instantaneously chanting a good-luck mantra.
It is hard to focus a Nikon through tears, but he succeeds and walks off, likewise praying for peace, good fortune, and yes, even visitors to this tortured land.

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